GLOBAL WARMING: HOAX vs. TRUTH

The bad news: If we burn all of the planet’s fossil fuels, we’ll melt all of the world’s land ice. The oceans will rise about 200 feet (6o m). Many of the world’s greatest cities will disappear.

The good news: You’ll be long gone so … party on? Not so fast…

Watching Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” should have been enough to turn any sane and semi-intelligent person off such flagrant hype. A British judge ruled in Oct 2007, for example, that Gore gored the scientific truth in his film (see “Goring the Truth,” Oct 2007).

“Based on the judge’s ruling, the footage that ought to be excised adds up to about 25 minutes or so out of the 98-minute film. What’s left is largely Gore personal drama and cinematic fluff that has nothing to do with the science of climate change,” writes Milloy in “Junk Science: Hey Gore, We Want a Refund” (Fox News, Oct 19).

Par for the course. Whatduya expect when Bill and Hillary Clinton or their flunkies invoke the word “truth?” The Truth? Really?

And considering that this Clinton flunky claimed in the early 1990s to have invented the internet (the “information superhighway,” a term attributed to Gore), perhaps his film should have been entered in the comedy category.

Instead, the New World Order crowd in Oslo and Hollywood gave Al Gore a Nobel Prize and a couple of Oscars. Yes, the same folks who also gave Obama a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. Another comedy sketch worthy of SNL (Saturday Night Live).

Okay, so you can probably gather by now that this writer doesn’t care much for the New World Order flunkies, whether Democrats, like the Clintons, Gore or Obama, or Republicans, like Bush’s, Cheney or McCain.

But this Steward of the Earth does care about the Planet Earth. Deeply. Which is why he founded the Stewards of the Earth organization in 2012. Which now numbers nearly 4,000 stewards from over 150 countries in the world.

So is global warming a hoax or a truth?

The answer: Both.

It’s a hoax to the extent that the climate doomsayers claim we are facing clear and present danger. It is the truth that may haunt future inhabitants of this planet unless we start curbing carbon monoxide emissions around the globe.

Putting it succinctly, a death of oil and gas companies would signal rebirth of the rest of the planet.

Ironic, because “sapiens” means wise in Latin. And the way we have been plundering and destroying our planet is anything but (wise). It is not only a case of greed. It is an example of extreme selfishness.

We are robbing future generations of this planet of their future.

A new analysis in Science Advances, “Combustion of available fossil fuel resources sufficient to eliminate the Antarctic Ice Sheet,” finds just that if temperatures rise 11°C (20°F). The earth would lose all of the Antarctic ice sheet — which is where 90 percent of the world’s land-locked ice is, enough to raise sea level by itself more than 160 feet. When you add in the Greenland ice sheet — whose point of no return is probably closer to 3°C warming — plus all of the other land-based glaciers and thermal expansion, you get sea level rise of over 200 feet (see http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/09/16/3701137/200-feet-sea-level-rise/).

So let me try to bring the truth about the global warming home with some concrete examples, courtesy of Google maps at Geology.com. What if the ocean levels were rise 200 ft? What would that mean to the world as we know it today?

Well, one thing it would mean is that future generations might be able to go scuba diving down the skyscrapers of New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, even Beijing, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, not to mention London and northern Europe where a new sailing competition for Europe’s Cup might take place. Or where future generations could drive their amphibious automobiles over sunken cities, like Atlantis or the treasure-laden shipwrecks in the past.

Take a look….

North America

Hawaii

Mexico, Central and South America

China, Japan, Western Australia

Queensland, Eastern Australia

Northern Europe, U.K.

Italy, Middle East, Black Sea

WHAT’S TO BE DONE?

So there you have it, the hoax and the truth aspects of global warming. What’s to be done?

Well, nothing – if you’re a selfish SOB who cares about nothing and nobody except himself/herself survival in the current lifetime.

Or…

Put pressure on everybody and anybody you know in the government, media, your town, your neighborhood, your family – to reduce our dependance on fossil fuels, and promote the use of renewable energy (solar, wind, bio… etc.).

Or to use a medical analogy and apply it to treating our Mother Earth the way a doctor is supposed to treat a patient:

“First do no harm”

(“First do no harm” (Latin: Primum non nocere) is not a part of the Hippocratic Oath, strictly speaking, although the oath does contain a similar sentence: “Also I will, according to my ability and judgment, prescribe a regimen for the health of the sick; but I will utterly reject harm and mischief”, in Latin “Victus quoque rationem ad aegrotantium salutem pro facultate, judicioque meo adhibebo, noxamvero et maleficium propulsabo”).

Which means, we must work to remove those who do harm to our planet – the oil and gas companies, the various other industries that ride on their coattails, and any other individual or organization that prospers from carbon emissions and destruction of our planet.

Pollution and carbon emissions is bigger than any one of us. It’s bigger than any regional or national interest. Because they are killing our Mother.

* * *

ANTARCTICA

UPDATE January 14, 2016

AMERICA’S “GREENEST” CITIES

One would not typically associate New York with being “green,” either environmentally or literally. Yet when it comes to reducing carbon emissions during commute to work, New York City tops all American cities.

A report from the League of American Bicyclists analysed the rate of non-driving in large U.S. cities (population 300,000+), finding that 68 percent of New Yorkers travel by either bike, walking or transit. People living in Washington D.C., and Boston have also started turning their backs on the automobile, with bike/walk/transit accounting for 53.1 and 50.7 percent of travel respectively. In Portland, cycling has gained serious tracking, accounting for 7.2 percent of the city’s travel. However, according to the report, only 24.4 percent of trips in the city are conducted by bike, walking or transit.

Why New York? Is it that the citizens of the Big Apple are really the nation’s best Stewards of the Earth?

That’s no accident. What’s making these cities appear “green” is the financial pain of driving a car to work.

Midtown and downtown Manhattan, for example, are the two most expensive places in the USA to park, with median monthly rates at $541 and $533, respectively, says Colliers International’s annual survey of parking rates in North America. In third place is Boston at $438, 19% less per month than midtown Manhattan and well above the national average of $155.22.

There’s no shortage of cities with eye-popping downtown parking rates. Rounding out the top 10 most expensive central business districts for monthly parking rates are San Francisco at $375; Philadelphia at$304; Seattle at $294; Chicago at $289; Washington at $260; Honolulu at$217; and Los Angeles at $210.

If you’re looking for cheap cities, go no farther than Reno, which has a monthly rate of $45; Phoenix at $50, and Bakersfield, Calif., at $53.

Unfortunately, across the United States, the automobile is still king of the commute. A 2013 survey revealed that 76.4 percent of Americans travel to work by car and alone, with only 5.2 percent using public transport. Some 2.8 percent walk and a mere 0.6 percent commute by bike.

So there is much work to be done on reducing carbon emissions. The big cities could lead the way by jacking up the parking rates several fold, perhaps to the levels of New York or Boston. And then watch the commuter traffic jams start to fall off and the sun shine more brightly in their cities.